Following World War II, biological warfare was advanced through funding by the CIA, the Navy, and DOD with hundreds of BW projects at corporations and universities throughout the country. “Offensive” programs consisted of basic research into “promising” BW agents, development of dispersal methods (anthrax bombs, mosquitoes, cloud seeding, etc.), and stockpiling BW agents.
The research was banned in 1969 due to public pressure. Under President Nixon’s order, existing BW stocks were to be destroyed and further research confined to “defensive purposes.” Yet, in 1975, it was learned that a CIA project still maintained BW stocks at Fort Detrick with covert connections to “specific assassination plans.”
Race-specific weapons such as cocci (Valley Fever) and tuberculosis have been researched only by the DOD as biological warfare agents. Third world countries are considered to be particularly vulnerable targets for a BW attack instead of conventional weapons due to dispersed rural populations with poor health and nutritional status and barely sufficient agriculture. Blacks are more susceptible to tuberculosis than whites according to research. Progressive cocci attacks nonwhite races at a much higher rate than whites and once cocci has disseminated, the mortality rate is a staggering 50-60%, even with treatment. Unexposed populations with differences in enzyme systems provide the basis for “ethnic weapons.”
There is a lack of distinction between offensive research, which is banned, and defensive research, which is still permitted. The DOD is funding cocci research to develop a vaccine. However, the author notes: “In the context of biological warfare, even life-saving techniques such as immunization take on a strange aspect: immunity among one’s own population and troops is a prerequisite to the initiations of disease by our own forces.”
Many Americans might be surprised to learn that biological warfare research continues to be funded by the military — the DOD’s 1976 budget was close to $18 million. The failure of the media to report our continued involvement in BW research qualifies this story for nomination as one of the “best censored” stories of 1981.
SOURCE: Science for the People, 7/81, by A. Conadera.